The inspiration for this tale is a little dog called Loather,
owned by a chap called Douglas who, when I was still employed as a political journalist,
promised he could could give me the scoop of my career.

Well, after a few drinks had loosened his tongue,
he surprised me by saying he possessed special powers, but wouldn’t elaborate, 
hinting at a shady past in Her Majesty’s service.

He then shocked me by claiming the canine was also similarly gifted, even claiming she was a shape shifter.

When I expressed doubt as to this claim he changed the subject,
talking about his days in North Africa, disguised as a native, gathering details about enemy infiltrators.

I asked if these were Russians and he laughed, saying today’s villains included a plethora of ruffians,
from New York to Beijing, and that our former allies were often enemies,
disillusioned with hitherto-held values of freedom and motivated only by the sound of their dirty coins,
sounding – to use a cool term – ‘ka ching’.

‘Political allegiances,’  he claimed, ‘like this magical dog, can change shape,’ at which I laughed.

He would moan about a former colleague called Maximilian, who’d retired and was raking it in,
while he remained poverty stricken.

Well, it was a sad day when I attended Doug’s funeral,
but my mood lifted after being told he’d left me his dog.

This coincided with me becoming a comedy writer, but I was heavily attacked
by the right-wing media for being non-correct politically, with sketches featuring
far-right activists becoming ardent followers of that great example of moralistic cinematic art called Bollywood.

So I took up another pseudonym as Bill Boredgame, writing in The Daily Scrivener,
annoying the ‘new literati’ – criticising the overuse of cliches such as ‘going forward'.

I was again reviled by a new kid on the block, Max ‘Middleman’,
a columnist for The Daily Sketch, who hinted that he’d carried out
dark deeds in the service of this disunited kingdom, which of course he couldn’t elaborate on,
as they were covered by the Official Secrets Act.

Then it all went pear shaped – after claiming in my column, tongue in cheek,
that my dog was a shape shifter, I was immediately vilified by rival columnist Maximilian.

The Church of England got on the bandwagon, with the Bishop of Middldetwitch
slamming me for being a believer in paganism.

The opprobrium became too much, with people asking I and my bemused pet to 'Throw some shapes',
resulting in my resignation from the cushy number on Fleet Street.

Loather then stared at a poster advertising ‘Low-fat doggie cakes’,
and looked at me (this was after I’d moaned about her getting fat).

I even went to a ‘dance your way to fitness’ class, whose promotional material read, ‘Get fit and into shape’.

Then one night, as I sat in my garden shed to escape the baying mob outside my front door – they were a
party of Born Again Christians en route to protest at a controversial London musical in
which God is portrayed as left-wing, and were using me as a protesting-warm-up – I saw a
hairy creature swinging from the apple tree.

‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘that’s a first for that bleeding hound, an ape!’

But I cheered up when my pet returned, wagging its tail as if to say sorry for being naughty.

Then sitting forlorn in the pub I was assured by his former owner Doug –
who’d torn his splendid waist coat – (he’d insisted on being buried in it)
when climbing the cemetery gates – that I would get my own back
on his old nemesis and now columnist Max,
that retired ‘spy, who was also my fiercest critic.

I chuckled when I read what one reporter had written about the
furore surrounding me, ‘You couldn’t make it up.

‘Indeed you could not’, I thought the next day after taking a
call from film director Stefan Spellasbog,
asking if I could write a screenplay for his next movie, Loather The Shape Shifting Dog
(with the promotional material reading ‘You won’t believe what he’ll turn out to be’).